Andrew Offutt - The Sword of the Gael

“I like better what I was just drinking,” he said, and slid a tugging hand onto her waist.

“And is it honeymooners ye think we are, or an iron man yourself? It’s been but a little while-” She broke off, and her face clouded at his look. “No no, my dairlin boy, we’ve time, there’s all the night. Nor will I ever be able to say no to you.”

He smiled, raking her eyes with his gaze, and nodded abruptly: there, then. He opened the sack of leather. Starting to drink, he remembered, and passed it to her. It was long and long he had been out of the company of woman, and of gentlewomen even longer.

She drank, jerked the sack down, spluttering a little.

“Oh Cormac! Wulfhere would hurl you into the Black Pit here, and I’m a mind to, myself!”

Frowning, he took the sloshing sack from her. It was one of those they had filled with water. Cormac fell back, laughing. After a moment she was up on her knees and bending over him, her hands on his throat and pretending to squeeze, while he rolled his eyes and made the proper gagging noises.

It was thus he saw the waving eyeless serpent rise from out of the pit behind her, and swing blindly about until it found her.

Samaire screamed. At its first touch, the eyeless, mouthless snake, a cable the thickness of her wrist and with no end in sight, seemed to lengthen as if by magic. It whipped around her upper body, sliding naturally up toward her throat.

On his back, Cormac sent his two hands leaping up to grasp and pull at the boneless arm that threatened both to strangle her and drag her into its wet black lair. He could not break its hold, and he saw her eyes start to widen as the fleshy cable tightened-and pulled. With one hand Samaire tugged desperately at the thing threatening her life; with the other she flailed until her fingers hooked blindly in Cormac’s belt. With no thought of what she was doing, she clung.

Cormac grasped her wrist, pulled her fingers loose. Holding her wrist tightly, he rolled onto his side and dragged out his sword. He looked up, seeking the place to strike-without striking her.

Her green eyes were huge and her face had gone scarlet. “C-o-r-mmm…” But Samaire could not even get out the rest of his name.

She went over backward. Cormac, clinging almost in panic to her wrist, was pulled up to his knees. He saw what he must do, and that swiftly. Up swept the sword, to rush down in a flash of silver. In one chop Cormac cut all the way through the eyeless serpent, so that his blade struck sparks from the rock edge of that pool of horror. The severed portion whipped back into the pool as blood gouted up his arm. Released, Samaire fell forward. Cormac, still holding her arm, was pulled down with her.

Now he could force the coil from her neck. She gasped, sobbing and sucking air desperately. Cormac, meanwhile, stared in horror at the puckered red marks all about the loveliness of her throat. He looked at the rubbery thing in his hand. Its underside was equipped with suckers! What sort of impossible, eyeless and sucker-equipped snake had they come upon, that it could-

Three more of the fleshy, cold cables came whipping, raking the air, up over the edge of the pool. One found him, and he battered at it, but had to pull his blow lest he shear into his own leg. Another touched Samaire’s leg, and she shrieked in -horror when it whipped about it.

Samaire was once again in the cold clutch of a blindly seeking horror-that immediately slapped down with another serpent-like length, and began to pull and tug at her.

Fighting with the muscles of his leg against the powerful rope of muscle enwrapping it, Cormac struck and had to swerve his blade, desperately, as the girl was drawn a foot backward and he came near to swording her. He and the monster pulling at his leg were of a mind, and his movement to pit’s edge was simple. There he aimed another chop. Pulled off-balance, he saw his sword slide harmlessly along the ropy, writhing thing . The blade pushed a little rumple of scaly skin along it as though he were carefully cleaning a fish.

Then, with a shriek of terror, Samaire was tugged over the lip of that natural well. A splash, and she vanished from sight beneath dark waters that Cormac was sure had gone even darker since the attack.

“SAMAIRE!”

His rushing sword cleared his leg and left another writhing piece of serpentine horror flopping. It wriggled, as if alive even while cleft in twain. Dropping his sword and drawing his dagger, Cormac took a great breath and dropped feet first into the pit. If there was anything at all for him to be glad of, it was that he wore no armour.

He sank like a stone, nevertheless.

Dark streamers swirled about him, and surely it was not water but some black ichor from the monsters that made their home in this hell-pit. The water-or that strange inky stuff-stung his eyes. He forced them to remain open. A serpentine length brushed him; he ran his dagger into it and jerked it out in the strange water-slowed motion he had experienced before. The stabbed serpent leaked its juices and writhed in pain. The man’s feet kicked desperately. He twisted about in the liquid murk. His flailing hand slipped through water, touched something cold and slippery-and came into contact with cloth.

Reflexively Cormac caught at it, felt the trembling warmth of Samaire’s flesh beneath. His moving fingers touched the cold-blooded cable of living flesh that enwrapped the leg he gripped, and he set the edge of his dagger to it. As if slicing overdone bread, he sawed.

The woman was madly jerking as her captor sought to escape its torment. Blood darkened the water all around Cormac’s wrist. Then the dagger had sawed through, and a flopping dead thing that refused to die jerked and twitched over his arm. Kicking water, he jerked back his blade. His eyes were huge; his hair streamed upward as he began to feel the pressure within his chest. He knew that Samaire’s lungs were in even worse straits, and that she was brief seconds from the awful death of filling her lungs with salt water.

He could see only for a few inches in the horrid murk, deepened by the swirling ink and the blood of the monster. There could be no hacking and slicing, then; the danger was too great of daggering the woman. No, he had to find another of those serpentine ropes with his hand, then set the dagger to it…

Samaire’s body brushed his, moving upward, and Cormac gave her a mighty shove. Up went the woman to the sweet air, and the man hoped it was not too late. The creatures of the dark, pool had realized she was not the source of the sharp-edge attack, Cormac knew, and had released her.

Now they would concentrate on him, not a helpless piece of prey but a dangerous enemy.

Cormac slashed at a grasping cable of muscle. It snapped away, and he kicked hard. Straight up he shot, and he emptied his lungs even before his head broke water. He gulped in another breath and expelled it, seeing that Samaire was alive, coughing and spluttering, her hair straggling and stained. But she was alive. He drew breath again-and was grasped and yanked violently beneath the surface.

Flailing now, for there was none in the dark waters of this monster-haunted pit but himself and the serpents, Cormac mac Art shot downward.

It was then he saw that it was not suction-bellied serpents he fought, but a creature with serpents for arms. Dark it was, and its body was a truncated oval, sprouting those waving arms-and the stubs of those he had slashed away. Through the inky swirls he saw its eyes like huge plates, fixed maliciously on him, and its mouth. More strangeness, for it was the beak of a bird of prey, and like no water creature he had ever seen!

Eight-arm , he thought as he stabbed and kicked and struck, for he had heard tales of those monsters of the deepest waters, though never had he seen one. Until now, and his dagger raked across one bright malignant eye.